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Kamal Saleem

The Family Research Council's Jerry Boykin and phony former terrorist Kamal Saleem were interviewed on Glenn Beck's television program last night by fill-in host Stu Burguiere about the new novel they wrote together entitled "The Coalition."

During the course of the interview, the topic of the recently released report documenting the CIA's use of torture came up and all three men dismissed the findings entirely, with Burguiere mocking the notion that sleep deprivation or forced nudity could be considered torture, while Saleem laughably asserted that he had been trained as a terrorist from the age of seven on how to decapitate people, so the techniques employed by the CIA were modest in comparison.

Not to be outdone, Boykin declared that "this report came from a bunch of sanctimonious hypocrites" and said that the real "torture" was the supposed persecution by the IRS of conservative groups.

"I'll tell you what's torture," Boykin said, "torture is what we've done to the veterans at the VA hospitals. Torture is what we've done by having the IRS go after conservative groups":

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.

While there may not be much time left for us here in America before a combination of death panels and Sharia law overtake the nation, we still will rise up to defend the constitutional rights of the Twitter spambots that Obama seeks to crush!

5) Breitbart Uncovers The Truth The Liberal Media Is Hiding

The right-wing outlet Breitbart News went on a mission this week to uncover the dirt on attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch that the biased left-wing mainstream media has been hiding. Breitbart’s Warner Todd Huston discovered that Lynch had served as “a member of Bill Clinton’s defense team during the 1992 Whitewater corruption probe.”

Breitbart Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak commented that Huston’s story “ought to provide additional fodder for Republicans during Lynch's confirmation hearings,” saying that the nomination was a reward “for her political loyalty.”

Five years ago, many conservative politicians falsely claimed that the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act repealed the right to freedom of speech. This year, many in the GOP stoked similarly bogus fears to attack a constitutional amendment that would overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.

Now, one Republican congressman is accusing the administration of advocating for the “suppression of online political speech” by awarding a National Science Foundation grant to the website Truthy, a project of researchers affiliated with Indiana University which studies “how popular sentiment, user influence, attention, social network structure, and other factors affect the manner in which information is disseminated.”

Let Wonkette break it down: “Truthy developed algorithms to detect spambots, they worked, and Twitter nuked the accounts for violation of their terms of service. It’s nice to know that Rep. Smith is so concerned about the precious free speech rights of spambots.”

3) Marriage Conspiracy In The Courts

The Coalition for the Protection of Marriage suggested this week that there is a conspiracy afoot to place is to place the same two Democratic-nominated judges on Ninth Circuit Court panels hearing cases involving marriage equality, thus rigging the panels in favor of gay rights advocates. The California group unveiled a new website insisting that there is a “disturbing” and “strong appearance that the Ninth Circuit did not follow its neutral, impartial assignment process in assigning” marriage cases.

The anti-gay group, however, seemed to ignore, as one political science professor told the New York Times, that “the accused judges voted against the lesbian and gay litigants in a full third of the cases deemed suspicious by the other side.”

In addition, the Times reports, judges are assigned at random to panels “long before particular cases are assigned to panels,” and many marriage cases were put on a “fast track” which were “assigned to the available panel with the most senior presiding judge,” who in this case happened to be a Carter appointee.

But the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage isn’t alone in pressing its flimsy conspiracy theory. Mark Joseph Stern points out that “Ed Whelan—a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia—penned a strange post at the National Review in October in which he ‘wonder[ed] whether nefarious hijinks in the Ninth Circuit clerk’s office in San Francisco’ accounted for the judge selection in the gay marriage case.”

2) RIP Dorothy Zborknak

Meet the first victim of the Obamacare Death Panels: Dorothy Zborknak.

While the news of the fictional character’s Obamacare-manded death has apparently sparkedanger on fringe outlets, more popular conservative sites like Breitbart are still intent on publishing ridiculous articles like, “The Death Panels Are Coming.”

While speaking with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council this week, Saleem also brought us the stunning news that Sweden is now under the thumb of Islamists, and that the same Islamist rise to power “is happening here in the United States.”

Saleem told Perkins that Islamic control of America will be complete by 2020.

Saleem did however speak about Seven Mountains theology, or the belief that conservative Christians need to control the seven main spheres of societal influence, citing the work of Os Hillman, whom he refered to as “O.S. Hill.” Saleem said that he fears radical Islamists have “infiltrated” America’s “seven spheres of influence,” pointing to an interfaith service at the National Cathedral as proof that the “Chrislamic church” is “destroying our civilization from within.”

He added that America is experiencing what he calls the “Swedish syndrome.” In that country, he said, “when the Islamists came to takeover they started prying on the political leadership” until eventually the Swedish “leadership started protecting them and one day he came to protect them and led their movement over there so now it’s led by the politician of Sweden and the Muslims are taking over the civilization. Same thing is happening here in the United States.”

If the Islamist plot to take over America isn’t turned back, Saleem explained, “America will be fallen” by 2020.

Every year since 2006, Republican leaders have joined some of the country’s most notorious anti-gay, anti-choice activists and fringe conspiracy theorists at the Family Research Council’s annual Values Voter Summit.

Don’t be surprised if summit speakers venture off into the deep-end of the right-wing fringe this week. Far from anomalies, intolerant rhetoric, self-serving claims of persecution and doomsday predictions are a Values Voter Summit tradition.

“The gay rights movement, I believe, was birthed and inspired by the Antichrist,” McKissic added, while conservative pastor and co-panelist Wellington Boone lamented that it is no longer socially acceptable to call people “faggots.”

Romney, incidentally, was set to speak that year immediately prior to American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer, who is notorious for his incendiary comments about gays and lesbians, immigrants, African Americans, Native Americans, Muslims and, yes, Mormons. During his speech, Romney criticized Fischer’s “poisonous language,” prompting Fischer to lash back at Romney. Romney ally Bill Bennett also jumped in, criticizing Jeffress for promoting “bigotry” while Perry went back and forth between ignoring the controversy and eventually distancing himself from Jeffress.

While Romney may have spoken out against Fischer during the summit, Fischer had the last laugh as he succeeded in his campaign to oust a gay official from Romney’s presidential campaign.

That wasn’t the last time we would see infighting at the Values Voter Summit. Last year, Rep. Louie Gohmert accused Sen. John McCain of supporting Al Qaeda, to which McCain responded: “Sometimes comments like that are made out of malice, but if someone has no intelligence I don't feel it as being a malicious statement.”

4.Demand Abortions Be Performed In Public

Lila Rose, the anti-choice activist known for her campaigns against Planned Parenthood, had a modest proposal at the 2009 summit: “If I could insist, as long as they are legal in our nation, abortions will be done in the public square.”

At the 2010 summit, in the midst of the fight over the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins warned that if the ban on openly gay service members was lifted, then the U.S. military would become nothing but a parade-marching force.

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.

Conservative activists know the truth about President Obama’s agenda to destroy America by murdering white people, opening the border, ending the freedom of religion and aiding terrorist groups. And all of these things will happen any day now….

5. Obama Wants To Kill White People

Conservative talk show host Michael Savage is worried that readers may not get their hands on his book, “Stop the Coming Civil War,” because they may already be dead … thanks to President Obama!

Savage warned listeners that Obama is hoping to “stimulate insurrection in this country in order to declare martial law” and “mow down” white people who are protesting immigration reform.

“The most racist administration in American history,” Savage explained, has made sure that the “entire government is geared up to fight a war against white people” and gun down “all you evil white crackers.”

4. Border Vigilantes Confront Conservationists

A frequent message among anti-immigrant activists is that the federal government is refusing to do its job in guarding the border, and therefore civilians should consider joining border patrol militias to stop the purported massive flood of immigrants, sometimes with tragic results.

Calls to join such vigilante groups only increased with the rise of unaccompanied minors fleeing drug violence in Central America, even though the minors were actually seeking out border patrol officers.

This week, one of these armed groups ambushed a group of geologists who were “counting bats in a local cave” for a wildlife survey. One of the researchers told the Huffington Post, “We didn’t know what they were doing. We started hiding behind rocks. We’re not doing what they’re saying, and they’re acting kind of jumpy. … We had them yelling at us with spotlights, acting like they have some kind of authority.”

Of course, that led actual Border Patrol officers to come to the scene of the (non)crime…taking time away from their, well, actual job that they are supposedly not doing.

3. ‘Big Sodomy’ On The March

Not only are immigrants and President Obama trying to destroy America, but so is “Big Sodomy.”

According to far-right activist and BarbWire columnist Lee Duigon, “wicked officials in thrall to Big Sodomy” will “force churches to perform same-sex ‘marriage’ exercises” and make sure “pastors and priests will be punished if they speak against it.”

He goes on to warn that religious freedom and free speech will be banned due to “insatiable and unappeasable” gay rights advocates, who will force Christians in America to “form house churches, as the Christians do in China.”

“Never, never speak of a same-sex coupling as ‘marriage.’ It is no marriage, and will never be,” Duigon writes. “The hard part will be to decide what to do when they come for your children.”

2. Obama’s Clandestine Mosque Visit

Kamal Saleem, a Religious Right activist who insists he used to be a terrorist for dozens of different groups before coming to America to wage “culture jihad,” believes that the media is “suffocating the truth” about President Obama’s secret Muslim faith and support for radical Islamic terrorists.

For example, Saleem said Obama is covering up the “fact” that Obama attended a Washington, D.C. mosque on Christmas: “We see him on Christmas, he goes to the mosque, on Christmas Day he’s in a mosque in Washington D.C. taking his shoes off to celebrate that day on Christmas Day in a Washington D.C. mosque.”

Of course, Obama has actually been in his home state of Hawaii on Christmas in every single year of his presidency.

1. Obama Said ‘ISIL’ … Impeach!

As you may know, there are different translations for the group known as ISIS or ISIL. Some translate the last word of the group’s name, “al-Sham,” as Syria; others translate it as the region encompassing Greater Syria, or the Levant.

The wise Fox News anchors on “Outnumbered,” have their own idea as to why Obama uses “ISIL”…because he is “tipping his hat to them” and wants to distract Americans that he is a big failure of a president.

As Thomas Bishop of Media Matters points out, other Fox News commentators have used the acronym “ISIL” as well, but never mind that!

In fact, Saleem said ISIS will soon bomb America ... allowing Obama to declare martial law and remain in office.

“When the Muslim comes to America and they start doing bombing,” Saleem explained, “it will establish martial law and it will establish that probably the president doesn’t have to step down for years until the martial law is done with.”

Saleem warned that Obama is using abortion rights and LGBT equality to “devastate the Christian fundamental power and establish the authority of Islam” in America, adding that Obama is “waging jihad” and “engraving Islamization into the history of the United States of America and in the future of the United States.”

“It will have to be a miracle from God that America can walk out of this,” he said.

According to Saleem, the Muslim Brotherhood is taking over the “Seven Mountains,” a phrase commonly used by Dominionists to spell out the seven spheres of influence in society.

“The Muslim Brotherhood sits on the top of those ‘Seven Mountains,’” he said, claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood now controls the government, the media (“including Fox News”!) and the schools, where they are “teaching the kids to pledge allegiance in the name of Allah to the American flag.”

While speaking to Rick Wiles on “Trunews” last week, phony ex-terrorist and Religious Right idol Kamal Saleem alleged that President Obama attended a mosque in Washington, D.C. on Christmas Day…while he was vacationing in Hawaii.

“We see him on Christmas, he goes to the mosque, on Christmas Day he’s in a mosque in Washington D.C. taking his shoes off to celebrate that day on Christmas Day in a Washington D.C. mosque,” he said.

In every year of his presidency — 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 — Obama and his family were in his home state of Hawaii during Christmas. But perhaps Obama actually spent Christmas surreptitiously flying from Hawaii to Washington to secretly attend a mosque and managed to do so without anyone in the media reporting on it ... after all, it’s only a brisk, ten hour flight.​

In the same interview, Saleem said Obama “declared the Islamization over America” at the United Nations and is working to “create an envoy to Europe” to “establish radical Islamization in Spain, in France and in Germany.”

Of course, no one knows about any of this because of the media!

“This is happening and the American people are not aware of it because the media and this current Islamization power is just suffocating the truth for the American people to know what is going on,” he said.

Back in 2012, Saleem was scheduled to address a forum at a Michigan public school about the supposed dangers of Muslims in the U.S., prompting People For the American Way and the Council on American Islamic Relations to send a joint letter to the school asking them not to provide a platform for someone promoting misinformation and intolerance.

The school cancelled the event due to safety concerns after independently discovering that Saleem’s supporters bragged that he is a target of terrorist threats.

The hosts of the event — Republican National Committeeman and former state lawmaker David Agema, a local county commissioner, and a chapter leader of the anti-Muslim group ACT! for America — sued the school, the city and other city officials for a variety of claims, as well as PFAW and CAIR for the tort of interfering with a contract.

Right Wing Watch, a project of PFAW, was also mentioned in the lawsuit [PDF], which says the blog “criticizes and disparages conservative politics and Christian–Judeo values.”

The organizers were represented by Thomas More Law Center, a far-right legal group which counts Michele Bachmann and Allen West as board members, and its attorney Erin Mersino.

Today, a federal judge dismissed their lawsuit, noting that the plaintiffs “fail to state a constitutional deprivation” and base their lawsuit on “mere conclusory statements.”

Judge Janet Neff, a Bush appointee, correctly found that PFAW and CAIR were within their First Amendment rights to send a letter to the school: “The Court agrees that the petition from Defendants CAIR-MI, [Dawud] Walid, PFAW and [PFAW president Michael] Keegan to the school superintendent constitutes an attempt to influence governmental action, a petition that is protected by the First Amendment.”

As we’ve noted before, the Thomas More Law Center doesn’t exactly have the best track record:

Kamal Saleem, thephonyex-terrorist, appeared on The John Ankerberg Show alongside Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council where he explained how Islamic extremists intend to destroy the US and turn America into a country where Islam reigns supreme. Saleem, a regular guest at Religious Right conferences and radio shows, has claimed to have worked for the PLO, the Muslim Brotherhood, Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, the Saudi royal family and Osama bin Laden and to be the nephew of the “Grand Wazir of Islam,” a position which doesn’t exist.

During his interview with Ankerberg, Saleem said that he came to the US in order to “subjugate this nation to Islam” by “repopulating the nation and start becoming popular and start choosing our leadership.”

He added that Muslims use schools to “turn the American student against America” and “came to infiltrate the jail system because we knew if we take those broken ones, those that are injured, we can turn them into beasts against this nation and therefore we can populate this nation with segregation and causing the culture to break open” for Islam.

Janet Parshall hosted a panel on Islam with Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin and phony ex-terrorist Kamal Saleem during February’s National Religious Broadcasters convention, where Saleem described how he instantly healed his sister of a stomach hernia and headaches:

Boykin cited a report from Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy that claims that judges in fifty court cases have used Islamic law in making their decisions and that Sharia “has been insinuated into our legal system.”

However, as the ACLU points out, “the CSP report consists mostly of 50 judicial opinions, which the authors copied and pasted word-for-word simply because they mention Islam or involve claims brought by Muslims, contending that these cases serve as evidence of the so-called ‘Sharia threat.’” The report doesn’t even attempt to prove that Sharia law is being used in courts, but merely finds that there are some court cases which “happen to involve Islam or Muslims.”

Later, Boykin called for people to support Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert and Trent Franks over their role in leading the witch hunt against Muslim-Americans serving in government, which he said proves that they are “standing on the word of God” and “their belief in Christ.”

We need to understand that one of the fundamentals of Islam is Sharia, Islamic law. It has been insinuated into our legal system and we did a study that showed fifty court cases, twenty-three states judges used Sharia. Right now there are efforts in over twenty states to prevent that from happening with legislation at the state level called ‘American Laws for American Courts.’ Initially Oklahoma passed it and it was immediately challenged by Eric Holder and the Justice Department but there are other states that have passed it and still more that are working on it. So protect us from Sharia. Those are prudent laws that would protect us from judges being able to practice Sharia and violate Article VI of our Constitution by doing so. Second thing is; everything needs to get informed on this. If you are tied to the mainstream media you will never know anything about the true nature of Islam.

…

There’s a lack of leadership in America today. Leaders are intimidated, they’re afraid and they will not confront the Muslim Brotherhood; they will not face up to what is really happening in America. Those who will are people that are standing on the word of God. Start with Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, Trent Franks; they are a very small number who are standing on God’s word and because they have the spirit of God they see this for what it is. They need our help. We need to lite up Washington in support of these people that are the only ones that are unafraid because of their dependence upon God’s word, they are unafraid to confront this; yet they get pilloried from everybody across the country because they have stood up to the realities of the Muslim Brotherhood. We need to stand with them, we need to pray for them and we need to stand with them as they stand for us because of their belief in Christ.

For decades, the Right has attempted to discredit Hillary Clinton with attacks ranging from the disturbing (killing people) to the bizarre (killing cats). But after serving four years as Secretary of State, Clinton is leaving office with sky-high approval ratings. Before she steps down on Friday, we decided to look back on some of the most extreme and befuddling accusations she has faced from the far-right during her term as the nation’s top diplomat.

Anti-Clinton conspiracy theorists claim that her supposed Muslim Brotherhood sympathies have turned her into a covert advocate of Sharia law. Bachmann said that Clinton was working “to take away the free speech rights of the American people” and “our right of free speech and expression, religious practice, freedom of assembly, freedom of the printing press” in order to “empower the Islamists.”

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy claimed that Clinton had accepted “submission to the stealthy Islamist effort to enforce in this country the supremacist doctrine known as shariah” and the Family Research Council’s Jerry Boykin said the administration had shown “support for the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government.” Rick Joyner, the televangelist who has worked closely with Gaffney and Boykin, was left wondering why Clinton was “advocating” Sharia:

4. LGBT Rights Advocacy Will Destroy America

While the Right’s Benghazi, Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia law claims didn’t hold water, they at least got one thing right: Clinton acted as a champion for LGBT equality while leading the State Department. The Religious Right fumed at her work on behalf of gay rights and exploded inanger following a speech in Geneva in which she defended the rights of LGBT people and called for the decriminalization of LGBT status.

Liberty University’s Mat Staver warned that Clinton was backing a “radical sexual anarchist agenda” while Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention said that Clinton’s support of “sexual paganization” would bring about God’s judgment on America. Pat Robertson reacted to Clinton’s speech by warning that God may destroy the U.S.

At the Values Voters Summit, phony “ex-terrorist” Kamal Saleem even warned that Clinton was planning to “shut down” churches and synagogues this month. Since Clinton serves just one more day at the job, she better speed up with her diabolical plans!

Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality is furious that President Obama sent a video message to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change conference.

Televangelist James Robison laments that marriage equality, abortion rights and the Obama presidency are removing “the hedge of God’s protection” from America and continued “rebellion will ultimately break us.”

The American Decency Association plans to host Kamal Saleem, who claims to be a former terrorist, at Calvin College as part of a tour of Michigan. Saleem’s story of working as a terrorist all over the globe has been thoroughly debunked, but he continues to be an idol of Religious Right groups. He even spoke at last year’s Values Voter Summit following Paul Ryan where he warned that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to “shut down” churches and synagogues.

He spoke at Calvin College in 2007, where he met Professor Doug Howard, who went on to write an article for Christianity Today on the “bizarre” and fantastical claims that Saleem makes in his book, The Blood of Lambs.

Because Howard, likeothers, raised serious doubts about Saleem’s story, Saleem has accused him of working for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Michelle Goldberg of The Daily Beastreports that “Saleem told me that Howard is an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood” and in an interview with Tim Murphy of Mother Jones, Saleem asserted that Howard supports radical Islam:

But Saleem didn't flinch. "He's related to a special group called the Muslim Brotherhood, and he works with them, he went to DC, he was with CAIR," he said.

I mentioned that Howard is a Christian, which makes him an odd fit for the Brotherhood.

"So? He's a professor of history. Islamic history professor, and he's writing on what? On Islamic history glory. So the group he's with, there are different groups. He rallied with them in DC, and he invited an Iranian radical to Calvin University. They spoke right there." That Iranian radical, it turns out, was Reza Aslan, who in addition to being an American citizen raised in the Bay Area, is famous mostly for suggesting that democracy is a useful weapon against terrorism.

("I don't know what to say! Maybe I should add that to my faculty web page," joked Howard in an email, adding that as part of his semester in DC, he took students to meet with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, AIPAC, the Mennonites Central Committee, and, yes, one trip to a mosque.)

He claimed that major Muslim-American political and affinity groups “are fronts of the Muslim Brotherhood and operate government places linked together to create a shadow government inside the United States of America.”

“Today we the enemy of Islam, the liberal movement, the socialist movement, the communist movement, the women movement, Cod Pink, all of them are coming against me, the Occupy, all of these are coming against me,” he later told Joyner. “They have unholy alliances together with Islam, whether it’s homosexual or baby-killer, all these have unholy alliances.”

Saleem alleged that Obama’s top speech writer and Sasha and Malia's babysitter are both Islamic fundamentalists that are wielding secret power. “The right-hand of our President today, his name is Hasan Rashad, and he is sworn to destroy the United States of America,” Saleem said (possibly referring to OIC representative Rashad Hussain), “our President’s babysitter wears abaya and keffiyeh just like those ninjas, you don’t see her face everything is covered, that’s the babysitter of his children.”

“America, wake up and smell the hummus,” Saleem warned. He then falsely asserted that the Democratic National Convention invited “20,000 Muslims” and said the convention was filled with “socialism, Islamism, communism, fascism, homosexuality and lesbianism, and Code Pink, which is abortionists and what so have you, and now we kick God out of our nation.”

He also described to listeners his prophesy where two eagles were screaming at each other, which he said it means that: “the Lord said America is in trouble and the Church has cried, and I’ve heard their cry and tell them, help is on the way.” But God also told him “9/11 was a disgrace to me, after I saved the nation they turned their back on me and went back to their vomit,” and it is now up to Saleem to spread this message to America.

Last night on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow called out Paul Ryan for speaking at the Values Voter Summit and lending credibility to the bigotry and pure crazy on display at the conference. Her report provided crucial context on the extremists who are appearing at the conference – something that has been sorely lacking in most media coverage so far.

We have been coveringtheabsurd, bizarreandparanoidrantings of phonyex-terrorist Kamal Saleem as he emerged on the Religious Right scene, and today he had his biggest platform yet at the Values Voter Summit, where he was preceded by Ohio congressman Jim Jordan and a video message by Mitt Romney. Saleem told conference goers his made-up story about his time as a terrorist working for Lebanon, Syria, the PLO, Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and even Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, until he moved to the U.S. to wage "cultural jihad." He claimed he and his fellow terrorists "met the professors" at American universities and colleges, which "were our playgrounds," in order to help "the professors to establish new curriculum purposefully" to brainwash students to change "your children to hit your nation with everything they've got."

Later, Saleem said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is working with Islamic countries to eviscerate the Constitution and "subjugate American people to be arrested and put to jail and their churches and synagogues shut down," which he says will happen early next year!

Michelle Bachmann, speaking at the Values Voter Summit this morning, quickly one-upped Mitt Romney in pinning blame on President Obama for the violent protests in Libya and Egypt and deaths of four Americans in Libya. She accused Obama of appeasing the Muslim Brotherhood and opening our borders to terrorists. Not long after, Paul Ryan also attacked Obama over foreign policy:

Amid all these threats and dangers, what we do not see is steady, consistent American leadership. In the days ahead, and in the years ahead, American foreign policy needs moral clarity and firmness of purpose. Only by the confident exercise of American influence are evil and violence overcome.

But here’s the thing. Ryan and Bachmann are speaking at a Religious Right conference that is making a mockery of diplomacy and even the threat of terrorism. Consider the following:

the video that sparked the unrest in Egypt and Libya was created and promoted by anti-Muslim activists who have worked with backers of Bachmann’s effort to purge the U.S. government of Muslim Americans and key players in the effort to block the so-called Ground Zero mosque (e.g. ACT! for America and the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission)

in July, misinformation promoted by Bachmann and two upcoming speakers at the Values Voter Summit, Frank Gaffney and Jerry Boykin, sparked aggressive protests against American diplomats in Egypt, including Secretary Clinton, whose motorcade was pelted by protestors – Boykin and Gaffney have been the leading forces behind Bachmann’s witch hunt against Muslim Americans in the U.S. government

Taken together, this suggests more than a lack of seriousness. It suggests that many Religious Right activists are far more interested in fighting a holy war than they are with diplomacy, peace or religious freedom. Unfortunately for the rest of us, we have the live in the same world as them.

The fake terrorist I referred to above is identified on the schedule as Kamal Saleem, but his real name is Khodor Shami. He claims that he was a Muslim Brotherhood operative who “came to the United States of America…to destroy this country” and crossed the Canadian border and “brought weapon caches right through cities.” He also claims to have “completed his first bloody terror mission into Israel for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) at the age of seven.”